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Smile it is a natural gesture for our species. Charles Darwin he was the first to speculate that it was something innate And universal, like the emotions it conveys: we are all born programmed to smile, and feel joy and fun in doing it. And the combination is so close that gesture and emotion are almost indestructible: it is impossible not to smile when you are happy, and at the same time, it is enough to smile – even if you pretend – to see our mood suddenly improve. This hypothesis, which emerges directly from the works of the father of evolution, has been defined hypothesis facial feedback (facial feedback hypothesis), and over the last century it has gone through ups and downs: postulated by some as an explanation tout-court of the emotions human (there is no joy without a smile), rejected by others, experimentally demonstrated, and then refuted with the same techniques. A new international studywhich Italy also took part in, would like to finally put an end to the story: using a large battery of tests, and an audience of “guinea pigs” from practically all over the world, the authors believe that they have shown that the facial feedback is actually able to modify ours humormaking us a little happier even when we simply fake a smile.
The theory
As we said, the hypothesis of facial feedback is usually traced back to Darwin, and more particularly to one of his later, and lesser known works: “The expression of emotions in humans and animals”, Of 1872 (released about 10 years later the Origin of the species). The book is dedicated to proving that the expressions and the mimicry with which human beings express theirs emotions they are innate: they are not learned, but are already present in our behavioral repertoire at birth, the result of an evolutionary process that has shaped their appearance and fixed their characteristics, making them hereditary. The emotions and gestures with which we express them are therefore so closely linked, explains Darwin that: “Even the simulation of an emotion tends to really arouse it in our mind“.
Translated into more modern terms, the facial feedback believes that the stimuli coming from the system nervous peripheral (i.e. induced by muscle movements, such as those of the face) directly influence ours emotional experiences. Just as joy or fun push us to smile, in short, smiling, even a purely mechanical sense, induces a sense of joy or fun. A fake smile, therefore, can directly (albeit subtly) influence our mood. The consequences, if the hypothesis were correct, could also be very concrete: smiling could be one strategy to improve moodfight anxiety And depression. And in fact, it has been proposed, and used, as a therapeutic intervention in precisely similar situations.
The experimental tests
But how can we prove that the hypothesis is true? In the 1988 three American psychologists they devised an experiment which remained the standard in this field for the next 30 years: they asked a number of volunteers to look at humorous cartoons and evaluate how much they enjoyed them, and to do so in two different conditions, namely by holding a pen with the teeth, so as to forcefully pose the face in a smileor you hold it with your lips, so you can’t smile even if you want to.
The idea was that holding the pen between your teeth would increase the degree of enjoyment aroused by the cartoons, while holding it with your lips would have the opposite effect. And indeed, the results confirmed the predictions, showing a small, but significant, effect of forced smiles on the emotions experienced by the participants. Obviously, an experiment is not enough to close the question. Over the years, psychologists have continued to study the subject, and in 2016 it was published a new studywhich compiled the results of 17 attempts independent to replicate the 1988 experiment, and from whose results the effect of feedback facial was more than reduced: if in the original article the forced smile had increased the perception of fun on average by a little less than a point on a ladder decimalin the new meta-analysis the effect was reduced to just a difference 0.03 points.
The new study
The new research stems from the efforts of Nicholas Colesa Stanford psychologist who made one in 2019 meta-analysis in which he analyzed the scientific literature available on facial feedback. Including in his research the results of the 17 replication attempts published in 2016, the effect of facial feedback emerged nonetheless: small, but significant. “Coles decided to investigate the matter and began to gather a group of specialists from around the world, which he asked me to participate in to carry out an independent statistical analysis of the data they would collect.”He explains to Wired Marco Marozzifull professor of StatisticsCa ‘Foscari University from Venice. “Little by little the project has grown a lot, and after five years, also delayed by the outbreak of the pandemic, we have managed to obtain very solid data on the subject.“.
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